Man helped pregnant woman clinging to Bataclan ledge

Warning: Contains graphic scenes. People fleeing the Bataclan filmed by journalist, Daniel Psenny, who was later shot in the arm. Video: Reuters

This still image made from a video by Le Monde’s French journalist Daniel Psenny shows the pregnant woman clinging to a ledge of the Bataclan concert hall. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

The man who helped a young woman who was pictured hanging from a window ledge at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris as terrorists massacred those inside has reportedly spoken about what happened.

Identified only as “Sebastian”, he told a French newspaper how he had pulled the woman inside as gunmen moved around inside the theatre.

The woman, who has not been identified but is believed to have survived, was captured on mobile phone footage, in which she can be heard shouting: “Help, help, I’m pregnant, catch me if I fall.”

According to La Provence newspaper, Sebastian saw her as he ran from the gunfire inside.

He added: “She was begging people down below if they would catch her if she jumped. But it was chaos down there. We were 15 metres above the ground.

“I held on for five minutes and then the pregnant woman, who was exhausted, begged me to help her get back inside. That’s what I did.”

“I don’t know where she went afterwards but I went back to my old hiding place, which wasn’t great. Five minutes later I felt the barrel of a Kalashnikov against my leg and a terrorist yelling: ‘Get down from there … Lie on the ground’.”

Complying with the order, he said that he lay down with more than a dozen others as the gunmen fired from the balcony. Sebastian gave other details about the events inside the theatre where 89 people were killed.

The gunmen, he claimed, engaged in “negotiations” with the police at one point after ceasing fire and also told their victims that they had come to make them suffer in the way that people were suffering in Syria.